Would you ditch a Vulcan or a Victor?

[Navaleye]

I hear the latter had very poor ditching characteristics (why?) but what about the Vulcan.? Is it preferable just to bang out first?

[Stan Bydike]

Navaleye,

3 of the crew did not have a choice of "banging out". Although I believe an ejection system was designed by Martin Baker but rejected on cost (monetary):uhoh:

[Pontius Navigator]

I can't remember the name of the film, I guess Beagle will, but the callsign of the aircraft was PEDRO ZEBRA a Vulcan on an Atlantic navex that ran out of fuel! As it was a ditching film they dismissed the bail out option.

Ditching was preferable as all crew would be together in the MS5. They could pool the rations from the single seat dinghies and they would have 5 sets of SARAH which meant they had a total battery life of about 40 hours or 5 days if they only switched on periodically.

The Vulcan was apparently supposed to be a good ditcher and indeed when one did a wheels up landing the ground effect when it was below undercarriage height minimised the damage.

The bomb bay doors were pretty substantial and would possibly have remained intact.

[Art Field]

Victor, in short, no. Thank goodness nobody ever had to though a couple of crews got close to it in Corporate but I suspect the aircraft would have pitched in very quickly. The combination of a high wing and the underwings on the Mk2 would tend to tip the nose in I guess. A simular visual bomb aimers window in the nose of the Valiant collapsed on nosewheel failure so water ingestion into the cockpit could be rapid. All theory but I am not aware that any model tests were carried out. We carried a multi seat dingy though behind the cockpit released from inside.

[hobie]

3 of the crew did not have a choice of "banging out".
I remember reading about the LHR Incident and the unfortunate fate of the guys in the back .....

Are there other RAF Aircraft (still in operation) that share this characteristic?

[Samuel]

How could you hear they had bad ditching characteristics when it never happened?

[MMEMatty]

How would you get out of the cockpit of the vulcan in a ditching (or wheels up landing)? the door is in the bottom. Presumably the canopy would be jetisoned prior to the arrival?

Matty

[Pontius Navigator]

Matty, yes. The canopy could be jettisoned. Once the hood had gone the copilot, assumming he was capable, would stand on his seat and inflate the MS5 which was on top of the cabin and under the canopy.

He would then board the dinghy and the rear crew would squeeze passed the two bang seats, over the side, and into the dinghy. They would pass all three rear crew survival packs and the nav bags into the dinghy and also the copilot's seat pack. Finally the Captain would join them all and hold a roll call.


REALLY!


If one or two of the rear crew were injured, it was always the AEO in the drills, he would be manhandled to the bottom of the bang seats, his dinghy lanyard would then be passed under his arms or through his LSJ or pressure jerkin beckets and hauled up by two crew members above and pushed by two from below.

When a cockpit evacuation happened for real at Finningley, the staff Plotter, the last rear crewman who should have got out, was out first, through the live bang seats, over the copilot and down the nose.

Samuel:

"How could you hear they had bad ditching characteristics when it never happened?"

Easy. Models.

The Nimrod, on that basis, also had bad ditching characteristics. The pilots would cream the upswept tail along the sea surface until the nose dropped. The nose would then hammer down killing both pilots and the flt eng through the g-force. The rest of the rear crew, strapped in aft of the galley would survive but might drown as the bomb doors collapsed and the flat pressure hull floor gave way.

Only thing is it didn\'t at Art Stacey will confirm.

Models am one thing and real planes something else again.

[BEagle]

No - we'd leg it over the side and take to our single seat dinghies, leaving the lower deck to bugger about with the multi-seat dinghy as best they could!














No - of course I'm not serious ;)

[Samuel]

Wasn't there a Bond film where a Vulcan , complete with a nuclear weapon the size of a car, ditched and ended up on the seabed in shallow water with its wheels down?

Yeah! Right!

[BEagle]

Thunderball

[Samuel]

Thank you, I'll take two!

[reynoldsno1]

The rest of the rear crew, strapped in aft of the galley
Errr, I don't think so, unless they have moved the galley to just behind the flight deck......